In about 14 months time I’ll be able to vote on whether or not I want the Scottish Parliament to separate from the English Parliament. I won’t be just me, of course, millions of Scots will have the same chance. If you are in England you won’t get that opportunity. It’s not like a marriage where both sides goes to relationship counselling and together decide on a separation. It’s more like us in Scotland deciding whether to leave you or not.

I might vote yes, as I tend to feel that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people who are affected by those decisions. I might vote no if I can be persuaded that the Scottish economy wouldn’t be sufficiently robust on its own. If I see many more comments on facebook like this one,”The majority of the yes bunch are morons that don’t have a clue. Majority are a bunch of racist muppets that don’t want to be associated with England”, I might just move to Canada.

I’m English, so it feels a bit odd to be voting on the future of Scotland. But since I have lived here for the past 25 years and have a Scottish son and intend to live out my days here, moving to Canada notwithstanding, it is actually a vote about my future and the way in which I wish to be governed and not about nationality.

One of the things that has emerged, particularly from those who don’t want independence for Scotland, is the feeling that October 2014 will look just the same for Scotland as August 2014. It won’t. Nothing will stay the same, whether the vote is yes or no. The very fact of holding the referendum is like beating egg whites. They are still egg whites at the end of the beating but they look a whole lot different. Scotland will still be Scotland but it will be a whole lot different.

In some ways considering the landscape is easier after a yes vote. All powers will be transferred to the Scottish Parliament. There will be discussions to be made, on Trident and the Pound amongst others, and agreements to be signed, but government will be from Holyrood and power will rest in Edinburgh.

But what if the vote is no. It will not mean carrying on with things in just the same way as we do now. Further powers will, in all likelihood, be devolved to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish MPs will still be elected to seats in the Westminster Parliament. Earlier this year the McKay Committee report concluded that MPs from Scottish constituencies should not be allowed to vote in Westminster Parliament on issues that affect only England and Wales. For example, Scottish MPs should not be allowed to vote on matters affecting English Schools as the education systems are separate, and control over education in Scotland is already in powers devolved to Holyrood. This change would be supported by over 80% of English voters so it will be hard for the coalition, or any future Westminster Government to refuse it in the long-term.

On the face of it, fair enough, since English MPs cannot vote in Holyrood and, therefore, cannot have a say in how Scottish Schools are run why should Scottish MPs have an influence in matters concerning the English education system? But how will this change be handled and what effect will it have? The coalition is suggesting that any Bill that affects only England and Wales will have an extra reading. All MPs will be able to engage in the first three stages but in the final vote Scottish MPs will be excluded.

Again, this seems reasonable and fair at first glance but it will have the effect of creating two different types of MP. Since Scottish MPs would not have the right to vote on all Bills passing through Westminster they would become a second-class member and, since they would be unable to vote on all key issues, it would be unlikely that they could sit at the political top table, the Cabinet. And it also raises the question of who decides which pieces of legislation have impact in England only? Not every issue will be as clear-cut as education or the NHS.

And what about the Labour Party. It relies on the large number of Scottish Labour members that are returned to Westminster to form a majority government. It may very well be that Ed Milliband or his successor could become Prime Minister and have a majority of Labour members of parliament. But if the Scottish members were, in effect, non-voting members any changes he wanted to make could be blocked by English MPs. For example, imagine the Labour Party is elected with a decent majority in the house of some 40 MPs. Now imagine that they want to bring forward a Bill to reverse some of the education measures introduced by Michael Gove. Taken that in a majority Labour government there are likely to be over 50 Scottish MPs, none voting MPs when it comes to education issues, the overall majority of 40 is actually a working majority of -10. Labour will find its English legislation impossible to pass.

When I visit my parents in Cheshire they happily express the opinion, mainly as it is repeated endlessly in the Daily Mail, that England pays too much towards the upkeep of Scotland. My mum firmly believes that her taxes paid in England pay for my free prescriptions in Scotland. When they came up from England to meet me in Edinburgh at the end of a charity walk I completed there it was fun to point out on our way back to my home in Crieff that, thanks to her taxes, there is no longer a toll on the Forth Road Bridge. Setting aside the vexed question of whether this is true or not, these perceptions mean that English voters are already tending towards the view that Scottish spending should come solely from taxes raised in Scotland. But it is unlikely that it will go this far, rather that some sort of formula will remain in place to allocate monies to Scotland based upon UK Treasury spend. So the amount that the UK treasury decides to spend will still have an impact in Scotland.

I read a good explanation of how this works and it goes something like this; lets pretend that Holyrood is responsible for just three things and treasury decides to cut funding for all three of these areas in England by 10%. In this instance the block grant to Scotland for provision of these services will be cut by 10%. If the treasury decides to cut just one of the areas by 10%, leaving the others unaltered, the block grant falls by 3.3%. In each case it is up to the Holyrood parliament then decides whether to cut the service by an amount equal to the reduction in the block grant or to spread the deficit across the services or to make up the shortfall from elsewhere. This is the way the devolved administration works under a block grant system. The point here though is to see that decisions made in Westminster do affect services in Scotland. To put names to services, imagine they are NHS, education and policing. All devolved services. The treasury will put forward proposals for spending in these areas for England. Westminster MPs will debate the issue but Scottish MPs will be unable to vote as they are English matters. But these English matters do affect Scotland in terms of the allocation of block grant. Do you see the problem here? The relationship between England and Scotland will change from one where we pool our resources then ALL MPs decide how the spending is allocated to one where only English MPs decide on these key issues.

And surely it wouldn’t be too long before the parliament in Westminster started to wonder just what use these second-class Scottish MPs really were? Westminster will be acting as an English Parliament with Scotland having representation but no voting rights. Perhaps at that point England would be looking to sever relations?

The situation post referendum will not be as it is now, in Scotland or in England. There is a lot of talk about what Scotland might look like after a Yes vote but the debate needs to widen so that there is a better understanding of how the political and constitutional landscape will change should the voters say No.

I remember being hugely impressed when I first visited Rome
Around every corner there was something interesting and unexpected.

Scotland is like Rome only bigger!

I’m writing this from the train travelling between Edinburgh and Stirling.
First of all is the splendour of Waverley Station. It’s not like any other station I’ve ever seen. It’s just as if someone has put a roof over part of the city. there are roads snaking through and tracks all over the place with small retail towns between the platforms.

Then out to Haymarket with the massive Murrayfield Stadium preparing itself for this weekends Calcutta Cup. As an Englishwoman it is a very strange experience to stand alongside your son as he belts out Flower of Scotland along with what seems like millions of his fellow countrymen!

And next pulling into a very ordinary looking station with a very ordinary looking town to the right of the train but a glance left and there is a huge palace with the most amazing structure on top of the tower. Linlithgow Palace sits just on the edge of the town, looking completely out of place and perfectly at home. It sits oddly against the new town but perfectly in the wider landscape.

On leaving Falkirk – a thoroughly unimpressive place with it’s cooling towers, chimneys, football stadium, tower blocks, supermarkets and concrete factory, there is the surreal structure that is the Falkirk Wheel. Six nodding wheels that lift boats in a wonderfully extravagant fashion up the canal. It is fantastic to see that there is still the capacity to create a wonderful aesthetic in a functional structure. A simple boat lift would have done the job as efficiently but not as splendidly as the Falkirk Wheel. It raises my spirit to think that modern architecture isn’t all glassy office blocks or disposable domes.

Approaching Stirling and it is not the castle that catches the eye – although that is a magnificent site sitting as it does upon a single hill looking across the surrounding plains – but the folly that is The Wallace Monument. This huge needle totally dominates the landscape. A single pillar rising up against the backdrop of The Ochils as a permanent reminder not only of William Wallace but of the Victorian love of the spectacular.

And all this on a train journey that has lasted less than an hour and crossed a tiny part of east/central Scotland. And when you also consider that most of the journey afforded views, albeit distant and somewhat spoiled in the foreground by the squat commuter towns of Polmont and Larbert, of snowcapped mountains and is it any wonder that I don’t consider a commute to Edinburgh as work!

And all of Scotland id like this. A mosaic of small towns, a few cities and most with a story revealed by castles, palaces, gardens and monuments.

History around every corner. Scotland is just like Rome only bigger!

You can read more from Karen and other fantastic entrepreneurs at the3rdi.co.uk